


The Witching Hour

by LazyBaker



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Brick Shithouse Steve Harrington, Dysphoria, Eating Disorders, Gangbang, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Recovery, Rough Sex, Scrawny Billy Hargrove, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, post-season 3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:00:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26296078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LazyBaker/pseuds/LazyBaker
Summary: Billy's body is not his own.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Other(s), Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 40
Kudos: 141





	1. Fall [1/2]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Awrble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Awrble/gifts).



> **IMPORTANT!** Please read the tags! Thank you!

Billy’s last day is his first day back in Hawkins. Fresh out of the top secret, hush-hush U.S. government mandated clink, he heads to the Halloween party Carol Perkins is throwing this year.

He passes trick-or-treaters dressed in gory, terrifying-in-the-night plastic and rubber made costumes that set his heart hammering. The guilt in his barren stomach grumbles at a kid wearing a Jason mask. A dog starts barking from a yard to his left and Billy crosses the street, missing his camaro.

The party’s easy enough to find. Just follows the ghouls and princesses and devils his age to the loudest house in the neighborhood with a kid wrapped in toilet paper lying face down, passed out on the lawn.

He plans to go out with a bang. Get smashed. Get laid. Get going.

—

Billy steals a skirt off the ground while a guy fumbles badly through popping a chick’s cherry between the house siding and the shadows of the hedges. Billy snags her purse too. Tries to remember where the bathroom is. He’d only been here a handful of times and never sober. He finds it after a couple false calls, head already starting to hurt from the loud music and the louder people—more people than he’s been around in months.

 _Crowded_ has taken on the new, wonderful meaning of _the operation room packed full of surgeons ready to pry him apart and poke around and see what’s kept him ticking_. Squished like a sardine with people— _kids_ —he’s meant to relate with now that he’s out and healthy and able to live on his own, _technically_ —it’s suffocating. He’s over the idea of _people_.

Billy skips ahead in the line to the bathroom with a flicked up finger and the scraps of his old attitude he can still yank to the surface when he needs to. Came in handy when the doc tried to pull that psych mumbo-jumbo bullshit on him back in the clink.

The jeans he’s wearing fall to the ground as soon as he undoes his belt. He kicks them to the corner and pulls up the skirt. Uses his belt to cinch it. Empties the purse on the counter and sifts through the tampons and junk he won’t need to fool a guy and finds the makeup that’ll help him get the point across. He’s the girl Neil always said his ma was—desperate and easy and a harlot out to ruin a man’s livelihood.

What Billy has to do is find some guy to spread his legs for. Sniff one out with a dick the size of his arm and suck that loathsome breeder sense out of him. Guys aren’t _complicated_. A mouth is convincing enough without talking.

The hard shit comes when he looks in the mirror. Didn’t have one in the _hospital_. It would’ve set him back. Been too shocking. _No need to re-live the trauma._ Not like Billy couldn’t just look down and see the whole rotten picture in person anyways. Not like Billy _did_ for months, alone in his room at night when even the drugs pumped into his system couldn’t knock him out.

The doc’s got a good heart, but he’s as full of it as Billy is.

—

The person Billy sees isn’t _Billy Hargrove_.

Scrawny with stretch marks. Bony shoulders. Knobby knees. Sunken eyes. Chicken neck. Washed out pale. Hair tangled passed his shoulders ‘cause scissors weren’t _allowed_ after he’d _abused_ the trust of a nurse and tried to make a run for it. Only got the privilege of shaving a few weeks ago and it was _always_ under supervision and it was _only_ because he could finally hold the razor steady.

The scars under his clothes Billy can see dressed or not.

On his palms turning his fingers clumsy.

He’s memorized the lines, knows where they are. Where they aren’t. They don’t fade. They won’t.

His body isn’t his anymore. Not his blood. Not his hands. Not his feet. Not his face. Not his bones. Not his soul. He’s a mother. A father. A son. A daughter. A teenage girl with a crush. A little boy who’s just learned how to spell his last name. A family looking to go see some fireworks.

It’s all been tainted. Stained into oblivion.

He’ll live with them and this body and these scars that fracture and cut him up for the rest of his very short life.

Billy lingers. Caught by that reflection. Eyes skittering across this baggy shirt and baggier jacket hiding collarbones you could grab onto like motorcycle handlebars Neil brought him months ago on one of his visits where the outlook was just starting to spark _hope_. He lays his hand flat on his stomach, between his stark hip bones, against the absence of muscles he’d spent his entire childhood building.

Weak.

Small.

Nothing.

Everything he tried not to be and he still ended up here anyways.

 _Oh well,_ Billy thinks, smiling to himself, away from the mirror.

—

Someone bangs on the door. Yells at him to hurry up. _They gotta piss._

Billy puts on mascara that clumps. Black eyeliner he smudges with his thumbs to cover up his lack of shut-eye. Red, glossy lipstick has Neil muttering _fag_ at him, turns Billy near nostalgic for the good old days when ole pa was turning him black and blue on the sly and things were simple and Billy hadn’t murdered children.

He discovers a jar of mousse and a can of hairspray from the cabinet under the sink, scoops a gob of mousse out and scrunches up his hair. Sprays hairspray and coughs.

Dressed up in a bomber jacket, plain black t-shirt, and a leather skirt that hits him mid-thigh and rests on his bony hips with lips smeared slut red getting drilled in a bush—it’s a messy, _just been fucked hard_ type of look that’s not all that bad. Gives him tweeker vibes. An easy, not too pretty, but _good enough to get a guy off if he closes his eyes and pretends_ , girl. Gets him scratching at being optimistic he can catch a guy into throwing down with a queer. A hole’s a hole and that’s a sentiment that has to have reached middle America by now.

—

Tomorrow and yesterday don’t exist and wouldn’t matter if they did.

For him, tonight is all he has. The exit he’s been denied for the last year by armed guards with pistols on their hips and the doc playing the good intentioned thoughtful, caring daddy he never had keeping _sharp instruments_ away from his _traumatized boy_ —the light at the end of this shit tunnel is finally here.

Billy’s riding on borrowed time and he’s ready to pay in full with a hop, skip, and a goddamn leap into the quarry.

—

The party’s a headache. Billy pushes through to the kitchen, finds a bottle of Tequila still untapped for the punch bowl and chugs with his lips vacuum-sealed around the glass rim. Gets a couple of nearby spectators cheering him on. It burns on the way down. He can’t hold his liquor. One more tick for the board of what he can’t fucking do.

Doc said _no drinking, no smoking, stick to the pills you have, it’s for your own good, your body’s still adjusting, still healing, you have to take care of yourself_. Like he has any idea. Uppity old man with a hero complex trying to fix his past sins. He ain’t fooling Billy. Billy knows what kind of life he would’ve had before all this shit went down, and now that it did, it ain’t about to get better for his like.

Billy double fists his new best friend, the tequila bottle, and a half-drunk can of American Colonial he’s only _sort of_ an acquaintance with, his head spinning fuzzy and the party swims in warm bright colors and the music vibrates in his thin chest and he floats from room to room, crowd to crowd, looking for the double-once-over that will ring true and get him a trick who’s not so particular.

A gladiator asks if Billy’s one of the twisted sisters. Billy shrugs and says, _sure, why not._ The guy’s not interested and Billy has trouble focusing on his bland face, so Billy borrows a smoke and steals the whole pack.

It burns and hurts and sets a fire on the inhale. He coughs from the bottom of his oversized boot heels and _that_ hurts and _everything fucking hurts, why the fuck would he want to stick around for more of this._ Doc never had a good answer.

That’d just be _dumb_.

—

Billy finishes the smoke out of spite and tosses the yellow butt in a chick’s cup with better hair than him. He puts the bait out. Hopes to catch some asshole’s attention. Half hopes they’ll figure it out and beat him to death in true Indiana fashion. Maybe the asshole will let Billy suck him off first. Midwest hospitality and all. It’s about time he got a taste of it.

He finds the hook in the basement where the smoke from the passed around purple glass bong is thick and he gets heady just from breathing in the aftermath. A year sober, knocked up only on closely regulated and _locked up_ pain pills gets Billy giggling, kissing a guy who says his name’s _Ricky_ while his hand kneads Billy’s ass.

Billy makes it clear what he wants. He moves that hand up and in, under the stolen skirt, searching for the indecency he’s after on his checklist before the gates to paradise slam shut in his face for good and pitch him down to where he belongs.

—

_Ricky’s_ an old classmate. Someone who went to the pool. Some guy he fucked already with his fists or his dick. Someone who lost a sister or a brother or maybe their mama. Faces get mixed up, confused. It doesn’t matter and it ain’t gonna matter more five minutes from now.

They end up in the dank, dark bathroom lit by fluorescent lights that have been covered with a blue sheet stapled to the ceiling to dunk the room underwater in a soft neon glow, where scars can be mistaken for shadows and cocks can be tucked and hidden behind squeezed together thighs while bent over a vanity, ass up and ready to make his daddy proud and keep the Hargrove name untarnished by unwholesome proclivities.

Billy is the one to hike up his skirt, to put his elbows on the marble counter, eager for the guy, for _Ricky_ , to push inside him, fuck him raw with spit and elbow grease. Doesn’t want _nice_ and _smooth_ , wants that agony to strip him of his skin, split him open one last time, wants the pain to rip through him so he can concentrate on the wide push and pull and stretch of that inbred backwoods cock as it shushes the unrelenting noise in his head that’s kept him company for one last moment of silence.

—

His body comes to the forefront like it did when he’d been strapped to the hospital bed. The ghosts are pushed back. His aching spine. His useless arms. His constant aches. His everything else, but the very center of him is in blinding, bright focus—

It’s quiet.

For once, it’s just fucking _quiet_ and Billy can finally _breathe_.

—

Ricky finishes inside him. Then it’s one of Ricky’s buddies. Another guy dressed in a bed-sheet toga. Another with a werewolf mask. Their hands wide on his waist, their cocks a force keeping Billy on his toes, rocking with whichever boy decides it’s their turn to grab him and use him.

Billy’s head hangs low, eyes unfocused on the space between his bent arms, the smoky webs in the marble, lost in the blunt stretch of being taken, the grazing accidental sparks of pleasure by these douchebags who thankfully only care about getting off, who don’t care who Billy is, who are familiar and not. He’s tight and drenched and doesn’t make a fuss about condoms—Billy’s anonymous and good enough for this small basement bathroom fuck and it’s amazing and the worst thing in the world a Hargrove could want and he’ll carry it with him into eternity and it gets better when he hears, _she’s tight as hell, Harrington, you want a go? I think she’d be up for one more._

—

Billy shifts, braces his hands on the lip of the counter and cants his hips up, pushing his ass back hard, making the guy inside him sputter, hands slick with sweat grasping at his hips, trying to hold on when Billy shifts from _happy to take it as you please cum-dump_ to _boy gagging for dick_.

Billy tosses his hair back, out of his face. A noise lurches out of this body that’s been stitched back together so many times—a genuine laugh for the golden boy extraordinaire next in line rubbing the tent in his jeans, seeing him like this.

Slicked back hair. Black leather jacket. Jeans. Hints of that pretty boy face hidden by shadows of blue. Big and looming and waiting to take his turn.

The meds and all their side effects and the fucked in the headness that’s left Billy soft since waking up in cushioned cuffs strapped to a bed with no idea where he was _cracks_ and this _goddamn body_ produces one more last minute miracle—Billy’s hard. His cock firms up. Fattens. Rubs against the vanity and drips onto the tile. Billy shudders and can’t look away from Steve’s wide-bloodshot eyes looking back at him, taking in the sights.

There’s no mistaking him, not even in this blue oasis.

Billy means it this time. Really means it when the moan is fucked out of him and the stink of spunk and men and sweat spurs him on as the werewolf inside of him grunts into his neck, dripping warm and thick down Billy’s balls, his leg.

Billy fucking _means it._

—

Steve touches the dip of Billy’s back. Is careful. Feels the knobs of his spine sticking out before Steve’s fingertips meet the hem of his zipped-up jacket where the heat’s ballooned and hidden, overheating Billy. Slides low, dips inside to feel the puffy, swollen rim where he’s been taken and used, pushes in his thumb then spreads him wide to see it too.

“Well, hello there, beautiful.” Billy’s high school sweetheart only in the mind slurs, breath heavy with alcohol and hot on the back of his neck, high enough to see Saint Peter. The sound of his zipper being pulled down is _beautiful_. Like _Heart_ hitting that high note. _Meat Loaf_ being a sinner riding a silver-black phantom bike. _Metallica_ knowing exactly what Billy needed to hear burning alive, alone in his room.

Steve rubs his cock along Billy’s taint and pushes in with a wet squelch with one hand coming to grip Billy by his waist, fingers tight on his hip bone, his thumb rubbing circles into the center of Billy’s back as he bottoms out, bigger and wider and _huge huge huge_ , monolithic and transforming, shoves Billy past every limit he thought this body might have left.

It’s Billy’s last show. It his solo curtain call. This is _Steve Harrington_. Billy ain’t gonna hold himself in check. He’s in the moment. It’s quiet in his skull and the boy he wants to break apart is right here with him, sloppy drunk and hippie high, and sewing him back together with his prick.

“Fuck. _Fuck_ —pull my hair.” Billy gasps out, meeting Steve in the middle, lifting his head, ready for it.

Steve gets a fistful of curls and yanks Billy off the vanity, his back hitting Steve’s chest and Billy’s hands go flying, not ready for the strength pounding into him. Billy’s lit up, can barely breathe and knows he’s close to the explosion that will end him.

He fumbles for one of Steve’s hands, finds it—bigger, everything about Steve is bigger than he remembers—and shoves it to his front, makes Steve feel him as he shoots off, drenching the insides of his stolen leather skirt, body going rigid, clenching down tight on Steve. The silence is deafening and real and echoes for years, across lifetimes that aren’t his but are now and Billy leaves this wretched, decaying body for just a moment as Steve fucks the last rites into him and brings him as close to pearly gates as he’ll ever be allowed to get.

Billy blacks out and comes to to Steve winding Billy’s long hair around his fist, through his fingers, his other hand cupping Billy between his legs, his skirt scrunched up in the front where Steve’s rubbing him, touching the truth, keeping Billy upright and against him and poised to take his load, jackrabbiting inside him, hips pressing tight to Billy’s backside, pushing Billy hard against the vanity, recognition sparking in his reflection’s wide, shocked eyes.

—

Billy wakes up to sunlight. A morning. A day he promised himself he wouldn’t have to see shining through the beige curtains hanging in the window. The disappointment stings. It's crushing his chest. Cracking his ribs open again. He hears the beeping of the heart monitor and the roll of the blinds being pulled up _because sunlight is good for the mind and the body, Billy_. 

He’s sprawled out on the couch in Carol Perkin’s basement. A blanket covers him up to his neck. It stinks like weed. Musty plaid upholstery. He’s sweating. Dripping wet. Crusted spunk between his sweat slicked thighs. A head that isn’t solely his pounds under the pressure of his hangover. The leather skirt sticks to him. He unzips his jacket and takes a gulping breath before it hits him and his throat tightens and closes up fast. He grinds his teeth and glares at the popcorn ceiling. Kicks the blanket off and wonders where his boots went. Rolls off the couch, lands on his hands and knees and beefs it on the yellow shag carpet, tears prickling in his eyes. He wipes his mouth off on his sleeve.

Billy’s second day in Hawkins starts off—and that’s the problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve was dressed as the Dentist from the _Little Shop of Horrors._  
>   
> [tumblr](http://granpappy-winchester.tumblr.com)


	2. Fall [2/2]

Billy opens his walkman and flips _Bat Out of Hell_ back to the A side. Meat Loaf and a bottle of Jack he stole from Carol’s house are his only company as he limps along an empty stretch of highway. The horizon is blue skies and sun and cracked asphalt and faded yellow lines and tall trees that all look the same and it’s not fair how _sunny_ Hawkins is in the fall.

He’s 27 steps past the Hawkins city limits sign, carrying his army-green duffle bag with every earthly possession he’d been given at the hospital-turned-prison over his shoulder. He’s sore, tired, dripping sweat—soaking his jacket—and he’s had to switch arms _three fucking times already_ when a white sedan rolls to a stop beside him proving everything he guessed about doc’s farewell message right.

 _Travelling’s off limits, you have to take things slow, we’ll circle back to it eventually, later, let’s just see how you acclimate before we rush into anything, we want to push, but not too hard and not too fast_.

The passenger side door opens and there’s Small Dick and Tiny Dick in flannel and jeans and denim jackets, clothes too neatly pressed to belong to Indiana hicks. Hidden under the countrified get-ups, Billy is _very aware_ they have guns they _refuse_ to use on him and ball-shriveling sized needles packed full of tranquilizers Billy’s met more than a few times since his run-in with the nerds at the Byers crack den.

Small Dick gets out of the car and opens the back, holds the door open and gestures inside with one hand that has a scar running up between his knuckles, disappearing under his jacket. He’s wearing sunglasses. Clean shaven. Boring. They all look the same with their square jaws and lackluster faces. Reminds him of Neil’s army buddies Billy grew up hating whenever they came over for beer and cards. Fantasized about them sneaking him into the back of their trucks and making Billy do the shit he hadn’t been able to put into words back then. Too young. Too terrified. Too needy for love in all the wrong ways.

Billy would give Small Dick a shot. Either of them. Nothing hotter than fucking a pig, way more degrading than being pissed on or having a catheter crammed up his piss slit for months.

“You’ll be late to the barbecue.” Small Dick says, monotoned, with the underlining meaning of _get in the car, you’re trapped, you’ll die here sooner or later, and likely it will be later, we’re not done with you yet, you’re stuck, Billy Hargrove, you’re gonna live in cow shit Indiana and you won’t enjoy a second of it._

The trip back does not include small talk.

Billy keeps his headphones on and his eyes closed and his head tilted back and Meat Loaf rides off on his silver-black phantom bike without him.

—

Billy’s taken to Cherry Lane instead of the pre-paid apartment They set him up with for the next—he ain’t gonna think about it, no way, no how. Billy doesn’t want to set foot in there again. Dislikes how empty it feels, just like the room he had in the clink, except with a television and a fridge full of _healthy_ food. A waste of money. It’ll only rot.

He can’t be in that room or that bed. He doesn’t want to dream about a dark world with monsters worse than the one who raised him.

He tells the two oversized wangs he has _things_ to pick up, move to the new place. He has to shower. Get dressed. Fix up his hair. Brushing his teeth isn’t completely out of the picture. Make himself _respectable_. He has to get ready to see his family after months and months and _so very many_ painful months apart.

Neil’s truck isn’t in the driveway. Neither is Susan’s station wagon. Billy’s camaro is up with God. The driveway’s empty. The only light on is the porch light. No one is in this house. Everyone is at the surprise _Welcome Home Barbecue_ Billy was tipped off about two months back when the doc was trying to lift his spirits with the idea of _family and friends_ welcoming him home.

Billy lets the sunporch’s screen door slam shut behind him, stands with his thumb up his ass, his bag by his feet, listening to the sedan drive away.

They don’t have to wait for him to head inside, as long as he’s _in_ Hawkins, who the fuck _cares_ what the fuck he does. He exists to be carted off to weekly appointments and keep a log book he’s never going to touch about all the things this body will get up to. Being the U.S. government’s monkey is not the life Billy plans to lead, but his plans don’t seem to work out.

He turns the doorknob just to see what will happen, just for something to do, to find it unlocked and he immediately lets go, his breath ripped out of him, going shallow, nerves getting him twitchy. He doesn’t want to be here and here’s the only place he will ever be.

He doesn’t know what to do on his own.

Billy presses his forehead to the door and listens to birds and cars and life around him moving on and living and existing without a problem then his hands are flat on the doorjamb and he’s bracing himself and he’s knocking his head into the wood. _Thud. Thud. THUD._ It’s starting to hurt. Maybe the wood is starting to splinter. If he cracks his head open, what will spill out, will the doc be able to staple _that_ back together or has Billy finally figured a way to outsmart the old man playing Frankenstein?

“Billy?” Through the mesh lining of the sunporch is Max white knuckling her skateboard, red hair sticking to her face, gawking at him, frozen on the cement walkway between pumpkin lanterns leading up to the house she carved with Susan and Neil as a happy little family without that goddamn troublemaker there to ruin everything like he always does and did and will continue to do.

Her bottom lip starts to wobble and Billy wonders just how quick he could bash his own brains in before she tries to stop him or if that would be a little _too much_ to put on her plate.

—

Billy stuffs his duffle bag under the neighbor’s porch. Safer that way. No chance of Neil finding it and holding what Billy has left captive. He takes one last swig of Jack.

They walk to the community pool. Billy’s head aches. His body is uncomfortably stuck in the pits. Max stays tight lipped about his limp. Doesn’t ask what the hell is wrong with him. What was it like. What happened. How is he here. What did they do to him. Billy wouldn’t know what to say anyways. _I got fucked north, east, west, and south and spit back out._

Max is eating her Halloween candy. Taller. A face full of bright acne. Billy fiddles with a Tootsie Roll. It’s the only one he’d thought he’d be able to stomach and regrets his choice, second thoughts are instinctive now and he hopes it’ll just melt in his palm despite the cold and Billy’s hot-wired blood circulation.

Neil and Susan are driving around looking for him. Billy’s lucky it was Max who found him. Everyone else is at the pool. It’s the off season. Family events and such. Billy would’ve been one of the sad fucks working there if—. If. _If if if if if_.

The doc would tell him _ifs_ don’t matter. Getting better matters. What happened is what happened and can’t be changed. _Now is all we have._

Billy’s stomach churns and he swallows back bile, his throat burning and the sun is always in his eyes.

Max reassures him his room’s _mostly_ untouched. Max trashed some of his stuff, the _stuff_ she knew Billy wouldn’t want Neil to find and would just make things _difficult_. She wasn’t snooping. She was just—trying to make life easier. Susan changes the sheets on his bed every week. She’s bought a freezer full of ground beef to make Billy’s _favorite_ sloppy joe’s _just in case_ he wants to stay with them instead of on his own, _just in case_ he wants to come over for dinner sometime. Neil hasn’t had a lick of liquor since _Doctor Owens_ visited, saying Billy was _resuscitated_ and _alive_ and in the intensive care unit of a _very nice hospital_ paid for by tax dollars of grateful Americans.

—

Locked up, Billy lived in a vacuum with no TV, no movies, no magazines, not even a damn newspaper. The doc wanted a _sterile_ environment with no _outside_ stress to complicate the already complicated. Neil was allowed to visit a few times and never for very long. Billy hadn’t minded much in the beginning, being cut off from the world like that, drugged and out of it and then too wrapped up in what happened that summer when his head was screwed back onto his shoulders and he’d only had the doc and Meat Loaf to keep him in check and cajoling him to take the wheel and ram himself into the nearest tree.

Max wrote him letters and half of the lines of her notebook paper would be blocked out, redacted, with thick black bars, but Billy got the gist of what was going on in Hawkins without him and his ghosts. People moved on. The world kept on spinning while Billy stared at white walls while his body disintegrated.

Billy never wrote back. He’s not sure if he even could have.

—

Max reems him out, tells him a surprise party is meant to go _one way_ , that Billy should’ve called ahead and told them he was coming back a day early and Billy thinks _the government doesn’t like other people having secrets or surprises, I don’t know what to tell ya_ and instead says, _you’re being an annoying cunt, shitbird_.

He thinks he says it pretty nicely considering he’s eyeing every car that drive past and weighing whether Max would hate it if he were to jump in front of one, if it would kill him or just hurt a whole lot.

She sighs and glares at her sneakers and Billy _itches_ from the sun and the cold and the dead leaves on the ground crunching under his boots and the disappointment he can feel coming off her. It’s not her fault. It’s his. He shouldn’t be here right now. If he’d done what he’d planned, he wouldn’t have been here to call her names. Guilt leaves bite marks in his bones. He’s just waiting for them to finally break, speeding up the process because it’s taking too long.

“Learn any new tricks?” Billy says, trying and tired, boots scraping along the sidewalk.

Max eyes him from under her long hair, suspicious, and he gets that, never having been the kind older brother Neil had assigned him to be so he shrugs and they keep walking in silence and no car has driven fast _enough_ because this is _Indiana_ and everyone has to be _so goddamn slow and law abiding_.

At the next traffic light, Max drops her board to the sidewalk, the clang of the wheels hitting cement makes Billy jump and hold himself and think of awful things. The back of his neck goes clammy. He’s freezing cold and starts to shiver.

Max shows him she’s perfected the ollie, _thank you very much._

—

Through the chainlink fencing, across the parking lot are _people_ , a lot of them and without the dim, understanding lights of the party or the distraction of the booze and the wafting, dizzying, dismantling whiff of weed to scramble his head, and his bottle of jack gone, Billy skids to a stop. Breath shot out of him. He needs to hide.

Worse than a crowded white room stuffed full of masked men in blue scrubs and squeaking rubber gloves he never knew the names of telling him to countdown from ten are _those people_ who knew Billy from before.

Max tugs at his arm and Billy looks down at her small, freckled hand nearly wrapping around his bicep over his jacket. She’s gotten so much bigger while he’s been whittled down.

“They’re really excited to see you.” Max tries to convince him, easier to read the reluctance on his face when he’s got nothing left but the grody truth. In the year they’ve been apart, Max has turned back into that little girl he first met who was excited at the prospect of a sibling before Billy showed her what the Hargrove name meant.

She pulls at his arm again, this time catching his jacket. Smiles fake. Worried about him and trying not to show it too blatantly. “El— _Jane_ —she talks about you all the time. C’mon, it’ll be fun, Billy. Everyone missed you.”

The truth is hard to lie about when it’s out in the open limping on two gaunt legs and still stinking like the backroom of a bar and the spunk of old classmates hidden under his jeans.

Billy thinks _sorry_. He’s going to run. One day, he’s gonna run and he’s gonna make it out and he won’t ever see her or anyone else again and she’ll be thankful and realize it was better to stick to not giving a damn about him.

—

The cake’s huge and blue. The smoke from the barbecue makes him cough. Billy’s told his graduating class is here. It seems like half the town. Susan strangles him with her hug, weepy eyed, pets his face in a gentle, caring way that makes him want to snap his teeth at her, demand to know where this _nice_ and _caring_ woman’s been before now. Neil grabs him and pats him on the shoulder and says, definitively, _I’ll make you up a burger, you like it rare_ and Billy remembers how it felt the night Neil had whipped him with his leather belt, the buckle catching on the skin of his back and stripping him bloody and how he’d had to change schools because he'd bled through his shirt during algebra.

He doesn’t remember what he’d done to deserve that.

Billy nods, says a quick, _rare sounds perfect, sir_ and pats Neil back, _one, two, thee_. Maggots wiggle under his skin and he shrinks and these _people_ keep touching him.

Tommy H. hugs him, sniffs his neck. squeezes too tightly, says Billy’s hair looks _real rad_ , curls his fingers along the ends and lingers.

Carol moans about how Hawkins was _so boring without you here_ and kisses his cheek.

Vicki Carmichael grabs his hand and celebrates now that Billy is _home_ they can _finally_ go on that date he talked about back when they were both in the same English Lit class and Billy had just wanted her notes and the conversation to be over so he could stare out the window and pretend he was anywhere else in peace.

A guy looks at Billy twice and goes red—could be the werewolf or the guy in the toga. Or Ricky.

Billy can’t remember Ricky’s face, in daylight he looks like someone else, an older man he’d snuck into a car with and promised everything and then took _every single thing_ in the basement of an abandoned warehouse. A little boy teaching his brother how to kick a football _the right way_ that’ll make sure it flies through yellow. That same boy teasing his brother _if you eat too much chicken, you’ll turn into one_ and making him cry.

Karen Wheeler tries to put her hand on his shoulder and gives up, giggles nervously. She still has her wedding ring on. She looks at him with sad eyes, the want she’d aimed at him is gone and so is his chance to fuck up that slice of American, midwest, white bread family he never got to be a part of.

She tells him _you look good._

That’s what everyone says. _Welcome home_ and _you look so—good._

It’s that _pause_.

Billy knows what he looks like, hungover, his pills flushed and taking a trip down the sewers, his body crumbling by the minute, his head a racket—it’s not _good_.

—

_Touching touching touching._ He’s touched. Poked. Hugged. Kissed by women he doesn’t want looking at him. Clapped on the shoulder by men calling him _son_ he would only get on his knees for if he had more booze in his system. Told by _people_ calling him _friend_ they’re happy to see _him._

Hives break out on the back of his neck, his arms under his jacket. He pulls the zipper on his jacket up to the collar, shoves his hands into the pockets, and melts into the back of this get together where he sticks to the wall and hopes no one even breathes his way.

This shindig isn’t what he wants. It’s what _they_ want. Neil and Susan and Max and this whole damn town pretending they missed him, that everything’s gone back to normal. That it’s fine. Billy’s _fine_ now that he’s here and out of the _hospital_ and loaded up on drugs he’ll have to take for _years_.

At least at the clink, they had the decency to shove a needle in him, drug him up, get him high, and knock him out for hours, make him too docile to grab for the jugular, before having the nerve to _touch_ him.

They can all go fuck themselves.

—

That night in July, he drove to a motel, took the wrong turn on the highway, tried the backroads, got hit by a hitchhiking monster and puffed out his chest, sought out trouble rather than an hour spent between a married hag’s legs. Pain’s preferable to pussy.

And then he’d gone to work. Got Heather. Got everyone and served them up on a grimy cement platter.

Billy sits on one of the plastic chairs, listening to some kid talk to him about some shit—baseball, getting his old job back, it’s Curt, he thinks it’s Curt, he didn’t kill Curt?—and tries to remember the names, the faces in these memories that are his now and fails. Backtracks. Replays every second he’d spent watching from the front row while his body prowled across this cozy corner of Indiana.

Neil hands him a burger on a paper plate, squeezes his shoulder and tells him _we’ll get some shears for that hair of yours, son._ Neil ruffles _that hair_. Billy celebrates feeling nothing.

The smell of meat right under his nose wafts up. Billy clamps his mouth shut, his stomach lurching.

—

It’s the weird little girl he saw in his head that snaps his spine, cracks his chest and splits open his scars. She touches his cheek like she did back then, gently, like she knows him, like she’s got a clue, like she _gives a shit_.

Billy startles, flees with his tail between his legs, heart in his throat, shame stinging his eyes and an anger that’s not his, but _His_ , echoing in his head. Billy Hargrove is long gone. Whoever this is, it’s not him. Billy’s been dead since last summer. This is someone else, leftover of Him and Billy knows you don’t let the monster walking in his now loose boots off scot-free.

He makes it to the restroom and grips the piss bowl by the horns and chucks his entire life away, expecting to see _black_ swirling in the water again and only finds a bit of relief at how _normal_ what’s come out of him is.

“Um,” Steve Harrington says from the next stall, voice careful, “You okay in there?”

Billy spits one last time, wipes the spit off his mouth off, the snot dripping from his nose, serendipity’s at the stall door knocking to be heard and answered. He flushes. Stands on the toilet seat, hooks his arms over the metal separation wall and looks over into the other stall to make sure his ears aren’t lying hussies like the rest of humankind.

Steve’s sitting on the edge of the toilet, a joint lit up and paused mid-way to his plump lips Billy’s dreamt of biting, a plate overwhelmed and bending from the large piece of cake it’s holding resting on his leg. A fork sticking out of the middle.

In the cold, harsh reality of the community pool’s fluorescent lights where dreams and hopes don’t exist together, Steve strikes him across the face by how much he’s changed.

Bigger and wider, all the muscle Billy lost, Steve’s packed on. He’s not that sweet lanky boy in gym shorts Billy had mooned over during senior year—he’s sporting thick arms and an unsure smile on a scruffy face with red, blood shot eyes surprised to see Billy. Stinks like bad weed. Built himself into an ox with shaggy hair Scooby Doo would confuse him for. Shining with handsomeness Billy wants to blind himself with.

In California, Billy liked fucking straight boys. It was an accomplishment. He lived for the shame on their faces afterwards and, even more than getting his dick wet, he enjoyed rejecting them when they came back for another round. Got off harder when they picked a fight and lost to the fag they sucked off.

Billy stares gobsmacked at Steve, real and pungent and in bright technicolor, unhidden by neon blue light and a blanket of forgiving shadows and the haze of beer, not just a good memory Billy clung to, untainted by the storm and the shipwreck that followed—real, real, so stupidly real.

"Am I dreaming, or is that you, Harrington?” Billy says, following the old script that led to a year of keying cars and filling the other’s locker with shaving cream and countless run-ins that nearly felt friendly.

Steve cracks a small, sincere smile with no shame or regret or revving up to pick a fight, and continues on, takes a puff, rocks Billy’s world view, knocks him off balance and makes him wonder if last night was in his head.

“Sneaking away to whack one off?” Billy leans on toes, on the wall. Can see the swirling pattern of Steve’s hair on the top of his head.

Steve’s face scrunches up. Doesn’t matter how much muscle or splotchy facial hair he’s grown, he’s still _Steve_. Stupid and cute and refuses to laugh at Billy’s jokes. Turns Billy stupid from how much Steve doesn’t like him.

“Just, needed a minute. Parties are—“ Steve waves his hands around. “A lot. It gets to be a lot. All these, y’know, _people_. Together.” He grimaces around the blunt, doesn’t look at Billy long. Back and forth. To the door of his stall, the floor, back to Billy. Back to the floor. His shoes. His hands. The door. Adjusts his plate of cake. Lingers on the spots Billy’s existence can’t remind him.

Billy laughs into his elbow. Hears Steve say, hushed and sweet, _beautiful_ behind him, biting his nails into Billy’s hips. Would rather Steve hit him outright. Call him a fag and be done with it.

Hates the idea Steve could have forgotten.

“Am I that bad?”

Steve startles, earnest, trying too hard when he says, “No, you look—good.”

“Talking about yourself, Harrington?”

Steve’s cheeks go pink. Billy must have made his trek to the quarry after all and this is what his head’s come up with just as he hits the water—Steve Harrington rolling his eyes at him.

“Then you’re a big fat liar.” Billy decides for the both of them.

Billy steps off the toilet. Once upon a time, he’d jump the stall wall and land with his feet planted, but that story’s played out, finished, shut forever and stuffed back onto the shelf to collect dust and if Billy crossed his fingers, forgotten forever. Instead, he gets on the floor, grabs the edge of the stall and slides underneath, to Steve’s homey walled off corner.

Steve brushes his hair back, eyes flittering around anxious as Billy steals the joint from his fingers and leans his back on the door, arms crossed and hugging his waist. Fills his mouth with smoke and doesn’t inhale, knows he’ll hack up what’s left of his lungs. Billy doesn’t give a fuck, but in front of Steve, he’s got everything he isn’t anymore on the forefront of his mind. He wants to be erased permanently and doesn’t.

He’s not _that_ Billy and he still wants to be him for Steve.

It’s an _intimate_ kind of space to shove himself into with another guy who clearly ain’t keen for Billy to be here. Billy’s spent plenty of nights in cruddy restroom stalls with worse men who don’t have even an ounce of the magnetic pull Steve’s left Billy running in place with.

He wants to touch him. Has almost got the nerve to do it without an excuse.

Billy’s every boy he’s rejected, shy about asking for round two and about to get his teeth knocked in if he does. He’d take the beatdown happily. Honesty’s better than a bunch of phony sentiments.

“Last time I saw you, you were covered in, like, _monster shit_ ,” Steve whispers, “And pretty dead looking.” Steve picks up his fork and jams a large chunk of cake into his mouth. Has blue icing on his upper lip that Billy pretends to lick off on his own. “So—fine, you look like crap, but, like, you’re alive, man. That’s good. Better than being _dead_.”

Billy scratches at the patchy scruff on his jaw.

“Think so?” He says.

“You gotta figure most things are better than being buried six feet under for _all_ of eternity.” Steve shrugs. “Take the compliment, Hargrove.”

—

Steve _talks_.

To _Billy_. 

Says, _Max said you were gonna be back last week, but then something came up, I guess? I didn’t—they had a whole thing planned. Max and the nerds planned this—this party and they made that banner out front? Did you see it? I didn’t know that much glitter existed in Indiana, holy cow._

He talks about the nerds and talks about a chick named _Robin_ and talks and talks _and talks_ and gives no hint that what happened last night _happened_.

Billy imagined it, one of those _near death_ delusions to keep his body kicking while his mind’s running for the train tracks, repeating _it’s over, it’s kaput_ , he’s done for, has been done for for years if he really sat down to think about it and that’s all he’s done for months. Not much else to do. Staring at enough trees will drive anyone closer to the grave.

On one letter that had been nearly blacked out completely, Max wrote, _your dad cried when he found out you were alive._

Neil had sat in the chair beside Billy’s bed and in the few minutes when he’d been conscious and his mouth had worked, Billy had asked, _does she know?_

Billy had started to drift, eyes sliding closed to one of the last times he’d dream of nothing, and had stayed awake just long enough to hear Neil say, _yes_.

And that was it.

Max tried to prove that if even someone like _Neil_ could cry for him, he’s not alone. He has _people_ to come home to. He has something as simple as a _home_ after what he’s done.

 _She_ left him to starve in the path of the monster she knew would come for him just like he came for her.

Billy’s never had _people_. He doesn’t _have_ people.

Billy knows only the vague bullet-points of what Steve’s done in the last year. Max wrote about the geeks. About herself. Mentioned only in offhand comments that Steve had been there with them at the arcade and gave her a couple quarters or Steve had given them a lift to the theater after his shift at Family Video. He’d lied in bed under bleach white sheets picturing Steve in a boring _Family Video_ vest, stuck behind a counter living a boring, dull, lame 9-5 life that didn’t suit him, different from Scoops Ahoy because Billy couldn’t drop in and get Steve flustered with a couple well-aimed shots.

Billy had driven into Hawkins, learned everything he could about the top dog to take him down a couple notches, strike first, hit hard, get to the top before anyone can see the cracks in the lies he’s built up around him to keep himself going towards the ultimate goal of lancing Neil out of his life and himself.

And then he’d met Steve.

And then he clawed at every scrap of information he could find out about him.

And now Steve’s bigger and different and a stranger and worse—Steve knows every piece of dirty laundry about Billy while Billy mourned for a boy stuck in a dead-end job, in a town that’ll eat him whole, who probably never thought twice about Billy since summer.

Billy won’t stand for being talked over and forgotten.

“What about _beautiful?_ ” Billy interrupts Steve’s _some guy comes in and rents_ Jaws _like every two days, it’s so weird, who likes it that much?_

Steve’s confused, playing dumb with those candy bar crinkled eyebrows and frosting smudged lips while Billy limps and aches and wants for the serenity Steve’s cock so graciously provided.

“Huh?”

“Am I beautiful, King? Don’t you remember?”

“Are you,” _that fucking pause_ , “Okay?”

“You didn’t talk to me like this before. Couldn’t get a word outta ya most of the time.” Billy cocks his head, the growing itch under his skin, inside his head, with its static buzz gaining traction at the idea Steve _fucking forgot_ drowning out everything else. Of course he gets to have the excuse of being drunk and high. That he gets to change and be this different _Steve,_ sitting and talking to Billy, chill and casual after pounding the life into Billy just last night.

It isn’t fair and it just pisses Billy off and anger’s an easy wave to ride, he was born into these kinds of unstable waters.

“Before?” Steve asks. Wide eyes. Big and brown.

Billy’s snaps at himself for missing this stranger.

“ _Before_. Is this all I had to do? Put on a skirt so you could pretend I have a cunt?” Billy snaps his fingers. Waves his hand around. The walls are closing in on him. A coffin made out of hard metal ready to smash him flat. “Hell, I’d of done it back in school if you’d just dropped a clue.”

Steve stands up slow. Tucks the joint behind his ear. Holds the goddamn plate with the _goddamn_ blue frosted cake. Takes up the entire space of the stall. Has no idea what the relief Billy’d felt being at the mercy of those boys, the humanity injected into him by someone using his body, finding it good enough to get off with after a lifetime being stuck with needles and split open every other day in a sterile building full of lifeless, self-centered hacks and the doc who just wouldn’t listen and kept digging.

It’s nice guy bull.

“Do you care? Like, do you honestly give a shit what I say?” They’ve got a foot between them. Billy takes it. “Why are you even here?”

Big beefy, head full of bricks Steve stills. Doesn’t breathe.

“What?” Steve says.

“Is this what it looks like when you care? I mean, you _do_ care, right? That’s why you’re even talking to me.” Billy’s teeth sting. One inch of height difference and pounds of brawn against him. He stands his ground with a trembling voice. “I save your asses, get a shit bag drilled into my guts for six months. Kill a bunch of kids and get my brains fucked outta my skull by a bunch of sissy lovin’ jocks hopin’ to score with some green freshman—but, you _care_ , right? You and the nerds and everyone else here—you _all_ care, right, Harrington?”

Maybe Steve really does believe it and maybe if Billy tried real hard, if he was able to put in that much effort for a lost cause, he’d believe him too.

But he doesn’t have it in him.

Steve’s a lying sack of shit. Just like everyone else.

“I know you’ve been through a lot,” Steve holds up his hands, talks pretty and slow and patient, “But I don’t—what you’re saying, it’s—it’s—“

Billy hands shake badly, the fun little tremor that left him weeks ago is back so he grabs hold of Steve’s shirt, collects himself, stills his failing fingers and hooks them around Steve’s belt.

“Want me to suck you? I’m a little outta practice, but I heard it’s just like the whole bike schtick.”

“Jesus, Billy.” Steve pales, flinches. Yanks Billy’s hand off of him, pushing him away with a constipated look, taking a step back and hitting porcelain. “You lost it.”

“Never had it, hot shot.”

“I heard you were off your rocker, but, dude, you’ve gone full goddamn looney tunes.”

“C’mon, pretty boy.” Billy slams his hand on the stall, the smack of his palm rattles him more, eggs him on to find the soft spot that’ll set Steve off. “Close your eyes. Think of Wheeler or whatever pair of tits gets you going. You liked it enough last night.”

Steve grunts, cheeks flushing. He always got red in the face when Billy poked at him, pissed him off. It was easy to find all the buttons to push on an earnest boy living with his heart on his sleeve like a moron just asking for it.

Steve shoves past Billy, rams his way out of the stall, tosses his cake into the trash and makes for a quick exit. Back to the party and normal life where monsters are a hiccup and nothing all that bad to get over. 

The world's moved on. 

Billy's still _stuck_.

“You asked me how I am, how do you fucking think? Ain’t it obvious?” Billy calls after him, waves a hand to himself, what’s left, what isn’t. Panting with excitement. Voice raised and shrill, upset and telling and horrible, booming loud in the tiled restroom. “Honestly, Harrington, do you actually give even the tiniest shit about me or are you just that used to playing the golden boy everybody loves?”

Steve stops. His back twitches. _Big big big_. So much bigger than Billy remembers. He turns and stalks back to Billy, crowds him against one of the sinks. Jabs Billy in the chest with the first shot.

“I don’t see Shannon or McKennely or fucking Cooper here, do you?” Steve spits out. “I was drunk. I was high off my damn ass. I barely remember, but I’m here, aren’t I?”

Billy covers his mouth. Starts to laugh and his stomach churns and his body hurts _and hurts and hurts_ and he’s alive and breathing and there’s a tomorrow after all, there’s _more_ when there shouldn’t be and Steve Harrington is hilarious. The funniest guy Billy’s ever met.

It’s a tight upswing with Steve being a brick wall of muscle, but Billy manages, scrappy with this newly lit spark inside him to break Steve’s face as much as he can—he punches Steve in the jaw.

The flat _thwack_ of his knuckles meeting Steve’s sharp cut jaw vibrates up his arm, stings his head, shakes his vision. Billy’s hand hurts. The pain flares bright and overtakes him, sings inside of him in a pointed spike to the heart.

Steve hardly reacts, his head turned with the impact. He shows Billy an inkling of sincerity when he grabs Billy by his jacket and hauls him _in_ then _away_ , holds him against the sink and returns Billy’s punch square to the face, harder and full of the resentment Billy’s been asking for.

Billy tightens his jaw, clamps his teeth shut in a sneer and keeps his mouth from being broken to pieces under Hawkins’ golden boy’s meaty fist.

Billy drops.

Crumples to the floor.

Is blinded by those same bright lights that dance in circles, happy little loops under the sink piping, head spinning on his bony shoulders. Blood trickles out of his mouth. He licks at the cut on his lip, eager to taste copper.

“Jesus. Shit. _Fuck_. Are you all right? I didn’t mean—I didn’t think I hit you that hard.” Steve crouches on the tile next to him, hands flying in the air, flapping uselessly, looking like an idiot.

“There’s the fire.” Billy says, swooning, lopsided and giddy with a twitch in his pants to spread his legs wide and fuck right here and fight more after. He spits in Steve’s shocked pretty boy face, grabs him while the gob of his blood slides down Steve’s cheek and smashes their heads together.

Blood sprays out of Steve’s nose, soaks the front of his shirt, splatters on Billy and Billy groans, smitten with the pain and the blaze in Steve’s eyes, that Harrington glare he’d been on the receiving end of so often—every day for _months_ —razes something side of Billy now that he’s seeing it again. Lights him up. Destroys him to rubble. Brings him back to this shit life he didn't ask for.

Steve grabs Billy by the shoulders, hauls him up off the floor easily and Billy’s hands skitter to find some purchase on Steve’s biceps, his wrists. Forced to stand on his toes, he gets shoved against the wall.

Billy’s jacket rides up along with his shirt, cool air touches his stomach. Panic roars loud in his ears, overwhelms the heat Steve’s struck in him with the reality of what he is—nowhere close to that boy from California sporting abs and pride and a west coast born tan.

Billy tries to push Steve off of him. Shove him away, but his grip's steel and Billy’s _nothing_ , stripped bare and left to rot by the doc who promised to help him. The quarry’s miles away. He should’ve gone there first instead of spiraling down the shitter on his old man’s doorstep. Billy’s blunt, chewed up nails scrape uselessly at Steve’s thick wrists.

Steve shoves Billy one last time and drops him. The surprise of it leaves Billy bowled over onto the chilly bathroom tiles. Steve goes to the stall and spins out toilet paper from the dispenser, shoves it under his nose. Sinks onto the floor with his back leaning on the toilet, elbows on his knees, trading off glaring at Billy from under the fringe of his unruly hair and looking down, scrubbing at his face and tugging at his own hair.

Billy pants on the floor. Winded. Exhausted. About ready to pass out. He wipes his mouth off with the back of his hand. Picks up the joint Steve dropped. He takes a puff this time, a real one that blazes a trail through him, wanting that small burst of grace and coughs, curls into a ball, head between his knees then spits on the floor. Sees blood that’s black, blinks and it turns red. He’s unsure which is real.

On wobbly knees, Billy pulls himself up using a sink and walks unsteady, determined, towards Steve and drops hard onto his knees. Takes another hit and blows the smoke into Steve’s pissy face.

“You’re a tease, King.” He declares, voice raspy. Flicks the joint over his shoulder. He grasps Steve’s hand and places it around his neck, puts pressure on Steve to hold him there. Offers his throat to the wolf, not wanting any mercy or pretty things like roses, just sharp teeth and carnage. Touches Steve’s broad chest and feels under his palm how fast he’s breathing, the vibrations of his strong pulse kicked up and racing.

“End me. Don’t make me ask nice.” Billy begs for it on his knees like he should’ve done before summer came.

Steve’s fingers twitch then squeeze around Billy’s neck, hesitant then sure. Steve tosses the wad of bloody toilet paper to the side, his face smeared red from the nose down and more handsome for it.

“You’re fucking crazy.” Steve says to Billy and it’s nice to hear the truth. _Good_ is overrated, a hope for someone who's got lofty ideas for a future.

Billy leans his entire weight into Steve’s hold around his neck, cuts off his own air, eyes fluttering shut as Steve's grip tightens.

“I’m fucking starving, pretty boy.” Billy chokes out, letting go of Steve’s hand and giving him the reigns to do what he wants with what’s left of that goddamn Billy Hargrove’s body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Winter.  
>   
> [tumblr](http://granpappy-winchester.tumblr.com)


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